assignment 22 - pop! - cole

One of the few sets of unique circumstances that surround my generally unremarkable white, lower-middle-class, inner suburban upbringing is that which surrounds the beautiful game of football. I began playing when I was seven, a defensive end and running back whose majesty on the field could only have been improved had my helmet not been the size of the rest of my body. We didn't win a single game that season, and futility was a common theme throughout my entire seven-year career, but I loved every second of those losses. The game was basically my entire life. And once my eighth grade season rolled around, I had lost enough wait to become a "skill position" player for the first time since my third grade season in which I was a bowling ball running back whose job was to simply absorb as much contact as possible without being tackled. I was so excited that I was one of only three players to attend summer workouts with my coaches, workouts which ranged from filling in the various sinkholes in our field (which, in retrospect, is terrifying) to just deciding to go inside and play make-it-take-it for two hours (which, in retrospect, is probably why we were so awful at football). 

One fateful June day, however, we actually decided to work on football. Newly skinny and fast, my coaches made the momentous decision to line me up at wide receiver. My first few routes were immaculately crisp, and my hands seemed to engulf the comedically small middle school football, even if the passes coming my way weren't perfect. I had found my calling. Until one play, a simple dig route, five steps and a cut toward the middle of the field, but on that inside turn, I planted my left foot, turned, heard a "pop," and fell awkwardly to the muddy ground. Whether I stepped in a mini sinkhole, or just totally botched the concept of running is still undecided to this day. But the result was catastrophic. Unable to walk for a month, to run for four months, or to be as agile as once I was for the rest of my life, I have since been confined to fruitless attempts to integrate myself back into the athletic world, playing lacrosse and volleyball, and the nerdy, decidedly easy-on-the-knees world of speech and debate. But the question of "what could have been" regarding my life and football will haunt me forever. 

As far as college is concerned, I understand the impermanence of even the things that are taken for granted, and I think that the abrupt conclusion to my football career has allowed my to become more adaptable, to new, undesirable circumstances, like helping me to make the adjustment to a new city, new friends, and, once college has begun, the many changes that take place day-to-day in the most exciting period of one's life.